


Shades of Grey

by Herwhereabouts



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 19:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17607521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herwhereabouts/pseuds/Herwhereabouts
Summary: Frank decides that he needs to see if Billy has lost his memories for himself before he finishes what he started once and for all.





	Shades of Grey

*

 

The surveillance videos that he is streaming from inside Billy’s hospital room play on Frank’s laptop with the volume set way up high. The tension he is holding in his body as he watches the screen is making him grind his teeth. It’s important that he not miss anything.

The doctor monitoring Billy wants him to start therapy. He’s told Madani and the agents parading in and out of the room that Billy’s condition is as stable as it is ever going to be. That Billy is unlikely to regain the memories that he lost over five months ago. The remaining healing that he should undergo is physical and psychological now.

Frank isn’t the kind of guy to get bitten twice, and he sure as hell doubts the veracity of what he is being told. Not where Billy is concerned.

Ever since he had met Billy, it was obvious that survival had been the biggest driving force in Billy’s life. Frank realizes now that he never knew Billy at all, not really, but he’s come across people like him before - ones who are less shinier, less razzle-dazzle, more honest in their self-serving endeavors. Billy’s sly smile and pretty face, his easy laugh, allowed a lot of things to slip by Frank. Frank ignored the howling madness vibrating just underneath Billy’s skin and his too-bright eyes because he didn’t like being a hypocrite. None of them had been perfect.

So Frank doesn’t trust them when they say that Billy doesn’t remember the last few years of his life. Doesn’t trust any of that shit until he can prove it for himself.

He watches the Billy on the screen in a detached, numbed sort of way, though; as he screams, thrashes, yells, and cries. As the nurses inject him with sedatives and pin him down, try to get him to be quiet and more stable.

As he wakes up from nightmares shaking and backing up against the wall, knees to his chest. Telling the weary nurses that he keeps seeing monsters every time he closes his eyes, words tripping over each other and rambling. No longer clean-cut and eloquent and composed.

All it would take is just one slip, one minor tell, for Frank to be sure. He knows what to look for now. He’d then go in after hours and put a pillow to Billy’s head and have the gun in his other. End Billy’s new long con before he took it out on the streets for a test drive and tried selling his story to innocents.

It doesn’t happen. Billy is a fucking wreck. Some imposter who doesn’t sound like him, act like him, or even really look like him.

It makes Frank feel sick to his stomach. All of his good work possibly gone to shit. Left with a sad, raging, amnesiac ghost as an enemy.

He goes out every night that week and washes the streets in blood, his hopeless fury and guilt directionless. Unmoored.

*

There are only two officers guarding Billy’s door when Frank enters his room. Their eyes turn into saucers upon seeing him but they don’t say anything to Frank. Don’t stop him.

If new Billy was the old Billy, then he would have scoffed at the fact that they’ve essentially moved his threat level down and now have two guys who’re fresh from the academy monitoring the activity flow in his room.

Frank is going to tell Madani that they’ve fucked up on that end, because this version of Billy, who’s just pissing wild in the wind, is more dangerous than anything they can potentially face. Unbridled rage and confusion can make for a real fourth of July fireworks display, if he continues to get poked, prodded and questioned everyday like he is. It would be a hell of a show.

Billy is in bed reading when Frank walks in and his face immediately transforms - some combination of disbelief and relief mixed with surprise. “Frankie,” he says almost quietly, blindly placing his book down beside him with some urgency. It looks like he’s moving to get up, but Frank can’t have that. He bites out, “Don’t. Don’t get up,” and the way that Billy goes stiff and the way the confusion washes over his face in incomprehension makes Frank almost believe him. Almost. After a pause, Frank sits down on the plastic chair beside his bed and puts the folder in his hands on the ground.

“What the fuck, man? I’ve been here for how long and you come in here with attitude?” Billy says, more hurt than outraged, sinking back into his pillows and crossing his arms over his chest in an effort to self-soothe, his jaw tight.

Frank ignores his question and asks, “What do you remember? About the past year?” Straight to the point.

Billy pins him with his dark, shiny eyes, deep hurt radiating off of him, and asks again, “What the fuck is wrong with you? I was almost killed by a lunatic and you show up like _this_?” He gestures at Frank with his hand in disapproval, mouth turned down. Even with his scars, Billy is the very image of an aristocratic gentleman who’s just realized he’s stepped on a particularly nasty piece of gum.

There are so many things that Frank wants to say and do, but instead he bites it all back and just folds his hands in his lap with more resolve. Clearing his throat, he says, “Agent Madani tells me that the last clear memory you have is of our unit, serving.” Billy clenches his jaw and nods his head once in confirmation, after a couple of beats.

“Do you remember anything else after that? After we got out?” Frank leans forward at this and practically zeroes in all of his attention on Billy’s face. Maybe sensing something is about to go down, Billy deflates and cries out, “That’s what I fucking said! Do you think I like this shit, Frank? The fact that there are chunks of my life just - poof! - fucking unaccounted for now?” Billy pounds his fist against his chest, now on his knees on the bed and only two feet away from Frank in a swift move, looming over him, spittle flying. “You think I like looking like a fucking disfigured monster?” Tears cling to his eyelashes, his chest heaving, and then Billy bends forward and starts crying, his face in his hands. Body shaking.

Shit, Frank thinks, and closes his eyes. Leans back in his chair with the breath knocked out of him. Revenge is goddamn messy business. Then he takes one steadying breath in, then another, before he throws Billy’s file on the bed next to him. Billy looks up, eyes red and face blotchy, and wipes his face on his sleeve, before splaying his legs out akimbo. “What’s this?” Billy ask as he picks up the folder, voice hoarse and wet, still sniffling.

Frank says, voice low, “It’s your file. Read page 3. Start from there.”

Surprise and something like hope flickers through Billy’s eyes and he almost hungrily starts going through the pages. Eyes roaming and his hands shaking with a fine tremor. After a minute of this, his eyebrows pull together and his mouth opens up almost as if to deny what he is reading, but no words form. A few seconds pass and he closes his mouth shut tight and his lips purse up. His eyes are glossy again, his shoulders hunched and caved in, shaking fingers skimming over words and flipping through pages the slower the more he reads.

Time seems suspended as Frank sits there like he’s glued, and watches Billy fall apart. Frank sits there in silence, in his own private hell.

Billy glances up at him, as more tears fall, resignation and anger clear on his face. “Is that why you’re here? To kill me?” Frank doesn’t say anything. Which might be the wrong thing to do because Billy launches himself at him, his fingers yanking at the collar of Frank’s jacket and he yells, “Just do it already! Do it! Finish it, you bastard!”

On instinct Frank throws him back against the bed and does take out his gun and aim it at Billy’s tear-streaked face. “I understand,” Billy says with some effort, braced against the bed, head down now, waiting for the guillotine to drop. He almost looks relieved.

Frank wishes he were made of stronger stuff, but he has no time to contemplate anything because the two officers run into the room due to the ruckus, guns pointed at them. “Stand down and drop your weapon!”

It takes 2 seconds for Frank to come to a decision. Something like this should take longer than that, in hindsight, when you the think about the magnitude of what has transpired. Frank disarms both guys with relative ease and knocks them out. Billy watches all of this frozen in place, his breath held, eyes jumping to the gun nearest to him on the floor.

Frank holds his eyes as he starts undressing one of the unconscious cops, closer to Billy’s build and height. “The way I see it, you’ve got two options: you’re either going to go to jail and rot, or you’re coming with me and keeping your nose clean.” Billy sneers at him, going for hard but just falling short of it. A moment passes and then he starts taking his shirt off and pulling on the clothes that Frank throws his way.

It should be an easy decision to make and Billy is nothing if not a survivor. He bends down to pick up a gun but Frank barks out, “Don’t. I can’t trust you for shit.” Billy huffs out a laugh self-deprecatingly and raises his hands, and says with some bitterness, “I don’t blame you, man. Seems like you’ve got shit taste in friends, huh?”

Frank doesn’t respond back to that. They clean up and head out, sunglasses on Billy’s face, the uniform looking a little tight but otherwise fine.

No one stops them as they exit the hospital. Frank reckons he’s got 30-45 minutes to put as much distance between them and the hospital before they get called in.

He shoots a text to Madani to tell her that Billy doesn’t remember shit and Frank will keep an eye out on him. Put him down for good if he does anything even a little funny. There is no waiting for a reply. They get in the car and Frank throws his cellphone in a Fedex truck while he’s walking by, because he doesn’t trust easy anymore.

“Where to?” Billy asks as he fiddles with his sunglasses and tries to not to catch a glimpse of his face on the reflective surfaces in the car, which makes Frank crack a smile.

Maybe Frank is as dumb as Billy has claimed all of those long years, because here he is, sitting in a car with a guy who is one of the worst of the worst. But Frank absolved him of all of his sins by smacking his head one too many times. Frank played the role of a merciful God and pardoned Billy in a manner that would be goddamn hilarious if it weren’t so fucking tragic.

“We’re gonna lay low for a bit. I’ve got a place in Boston.” They will need to grab some supplies along the way, along with cash and a change of clothes.

Frank takes one last look behind them as he drives away. Billy buckled up and quiet next to him. The city vibrant and alive with chaos as he drives them far away, from a past that is still too close to the surface, sitting right next to him.

Frank isn’t afraid of dying, though, all thanks to Billy.

  
*  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers for season 2. I am pretending it never happened. Lalalala... Sigh!
> 
> Also, I might write a chapter two to this, wherein they go to Boston while the arctic weather has moved in, and actually have to be holed up in one place for a couple of days and talk about their feelings. I might! I might. :) 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this!


End file.
